The Mississippi River sweeps
millions of bottles, cans, tires, oil, plastic bags and containers, along
with junk of every description, and chemicals into the Gulf of Mexico
24/7. From Minnesota where it starts as a six food wide, 15 inches deep
stream, it travels 2,552 miles and drops 1,772 feet through nine states
until it rushes into the ocean. At its mouth, the Mississippi River creates
a 10,000-mile “dead zone” where most vertebrate marine creatures cannot
live because toxic waters contaminate their habitat.

How do I know? Over 15 years
ago, my friend Gary and I canoed the Mississippi River beginning at its
humble source in Lake Itasca, Minnesota. At first, perfect beauty greeted
us until we hit the first homes and towns along the river. From there,
bottles, cans, plastic bags, plastic containers, cars, sofas, tires, machinery,
paper, cups, used diapers and hundreds of other pieces of trash passed
by my eyes. We carried two large plastic trash bags and filled them every
day. We dumped them at trashcans in the small towns we passed along the
way.

At the end, I wrote a commentary
asking the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press to engage civic
leaders, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, high schools, Rotary and Lions clubs
to form teams to clean up Old Man River. I asked them to consider a 10-cent
deposit-return law for all soda pop, beer and liqueur bottles like Michigan’s
successful law. The editors and publishers of both papers refused to publish
my commentary. Hard fact: 70 percent of Americans refuse to recycle anything.
A large percentage of them toss anything, anywhere, at any time. McDonald’s
and Pizza Hut customers throw the most trash out their car windows. Plastic
water bottles, beer and soda containers litter the landscape by the trillions!

Last week, my preacher spoke
about the Herculean efforts of Chad Pregracke on his quest to clean up
the Mississippi River one piece of trash at a time. Americans along the
river toss their debris one piece at a time and Pregracke intends to pick
it up “one piece at a time.” Pregracke ran into the same roadblocks with
his efforts to engage government and civic clubs: they ignored him.

“At the age of 17, he started
making calls to government agencies to notify them of the problem, assuming
someone would take care of it. Year after year passed by and the problem
only worsened. In 1997 Chad decided that, if no one else was going to
clean up the river, he would.”

Since 1998, Chad engaged 60,000
volunteers to retrieve 6,000,000 (million) pounds of trash of every description.
He expanded his work to the Ohio and other rivers.

On his website: “Chad’s vision,
charisma, non-stop work ethic and natural leadership garnered him an abundance
of awards and honors over the years. Most notably, Chad was the recipient
of the Jefferson Award for Public Service, America’s version of the Nobel
Prize, in June 2002. Chad accepted this award in the United States Supreme
Court in Washington D.C. with other award recipients: Rudolph Giuliani,
Bill and Melinda Gates, and Lilly Tartikoff.”

Chad Pregracke authored: From
the Bottom Up: One Man’s Crusade to Clean America’s Rivers. To purchase
a copy of the book, please call the office at (309) 496-9848.

This brings up the most important
point: we Americans must begin to clean up our country “upstream” by changing
ourselves from a “throw-away” society to a “recycling-return” society.
All the cleanups in the world won’t solve the core problem: millions of
Americans tossing their containers and trash.

We need to help Chad expand
his work into the “deposit-return” container laws like the State of Michigan.
We need to transform from plastic bags use to cotton bag use. It’s evident
that millions of Americans don’t care where they toss their trash. Economic
incentives change that behavior very effectively. Michigan’s rivers, lakes
and roadways remain pristine because an army of kids scours the landscape
for 10- cent return containers.

If you’re the kind of person
who cares about North America’s environment and beauty, sign on with Chad
Pregracke’s team. Start your own team in your own city or state. Expand
your powers by forming groups that create change. Model your work after
Chad’s work. He will help you.

Finally, where you engage your
heart, you infuse your life with energy, purpose and passion. Follow Chad’s
lead and become a leader in your state, city and community. Your efforts
will give the Mighty Mississippi a chance to run clean again along with
all the other rivers in America. In the process, you will preserve Tom
Sawyer, Jim and Huckleberry Finn’s legacy.

“Rivers
flow not past, but through us; tingling, vibrating, exciting every
cell and fiber in our bodies, making them sing and glide.”
John Muir